Drawer divider system

ABSTRACT

Disclosed is a drawer divider system for dividing a drawer in a tool chest or the like into a plurality of compartments. The divider elements comprise one-piece plastic strips having integrally formed resilient arms at both ends for engaging the opposed sidewalls of the drawer. The divider is provided with a plurality of upwardly facing recesses in the form of inverted sawteeth along its length so that the recesses of adjacently positioned dividers may support articles therein.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to the organization of the contents ofdrawers. The invention particularly relates to a drawer divider systemincluding insertable, integrally formed drawer dividers for dividing adrawer into a plurality of compartments.

2. Description of the Prior Art

It is often desirable that drawers in storage chests, particularly intool boxes, be capable of subdivision into a plurality of compartmentsfor segregating various articles stored therein. Many systems have beendevised for this purpose, including systems utilizing insertableelongate strips held in place between a pair of opposed sidewalls of thedrawer. Most such systems of the prior art require multiple componentsfor forming each drawer divider, or require specially formed elements inor adjacent the walls of the drawer to receive the dividers. To date, nocommercially available drawer divider system overcomes the noteddisadvantages of the prior art.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides a novel and commercially attractivedrawer divider system that can be economically manufactured and have auseful life of years.

Broadly, the drawer divider of the invention is formed as a thinelongate upstanding strip, preferably of plastic material, andintegrally formed resilient arms at both ends of the strip for engagingthe opposed sidewalls of a drawer.

In accordance with one aspect of the invention, there is provided adrawer divider system including a drawer having opposed sidewalls and atleast one elongate drawer divider for dividing the drawer into aplurality of compartments. Each drawer divider comprises a main bodyportion comprising a relatively thin elongate strip member having alength approximating the distance between the opposed sidewalls of thedrawer, with the body portion strip member being substantiallyvertically upstanding in its operational orientation, and at least onesidewall engaging portion integrally formed at an end of the bodyportion. The sidewall engaging portion comprises a pair of resilientarms integrally joined together at the body portion end and flaringoutwardly from the body portion to sidewall engaging tips. Theresiliency of the arms permits the arms to exert sufficient force at thepoints of engagemen with the sidewalls to securely hold the drawerdivider therebetween.

The strip member may be provided with a plurality of upwardly facingrecesses along the length thereof so that the recesses of adjacentlypositioned drawer dividers may support articles therein. Preferably, therecesses have an inverted sawtooth configuration.

The base of the strip member may be provided with a flange to preventbowing of the divider along its length. The rigidity of the strip membermay be further enhanced by including elongate beads formed at thejunctures of the flanges and the main body portion.

The present invention offers numerous advantages over drawer dividersystems of the prior art. For example, in accordance with the presentinvention, the elongate drawer divider elements have a simple, one-piececonstruction, preferably injection molded. Since the divider is in onepiece and there are no special receiving compartments, or the like, onthe drawer sidewall faces, there is no problem with small auxiliarycomponents being lost or improperly assembled. The divider elements maybe used for years and should have a useful life at least as great asthat of the storage chest in conjunction with which it is used. Theseand many other advantages of the invention will become more apparentfrom the following detailed description.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention will be more fully understood from the following detaileddescription thereof taken in connection with the accompanying drawings,in which

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a drawer including four identical drawerdividers positioned therein, with the two dividers at the left of thedrawer performing the auxiliary tool holding function;

FIG. 2 is an enlarged top plan view of the two centermost dividers shownin FIG. 1, with portions of the drawer and dividers broken away tofacilitate illustration;

FIG. 3 is a perspective view of a drawer divider of the invention;

FIG. 4 is a sectional view of the drawer divider taken substantiallyalong the line 4--4 in FIG. 3;

FIG. 5 is a side elevation view of the drawer divider shown in FIGS. 3and 4;

FIG. 6 is a top plan view of the drawer divider shown in FIGS. 3, 4 and5.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

While the present invention will be described hereinafter withparticular reference to the accompanying drawings, it is to beunderstood at the outset of the description which follows that it iscontemplated that the present invention may be varied in specific detailwhile still achieving the desirable characteristics and features of thepresent invention. Accordingly, the description is to be understood as abroad enabling teaching directed to persons skilled in the applicablearts, and is not to be understood as restrictive.

Referring to the drawings, and more particularly to FIGS. 1 and 2, thereis shown a drawer divider system comprising a drawer 10 and four drawerdividers 20 subdividing the drawer into multiple compartments.

Drawer 10 includes a bottom wall 11 and two pairs of opposed sidewalls,pairs 12, 14 and 16, 18. Drawer dividers 20 engage sidewall pair 12, 14and are insertable and removable therefrom in a manner to be describedin more detail below.

The details of the structure of drawer dividers 20 will now be describedwith reference to FIGS. 3-6. Divider 20 includes a main body portion 22which takes the form of a relatively thin, elongate strip member havinga length approximating the distance between the opposed sidewalls 12,14. As shown, the strip member is substantially vertically upstanding inthe operational orientation of the drawer divider. In order to providelengthwise rigidity to prevent bowing of the main body portion 22, aflange 24 is provided at the base of the main body portion. As bestshown in FIG. 4, the lengthwise rigidity is best achieved by providing aradius 26 where flange 24 joins body portion 22.

In the particular embodiment illustrated in the drawings, the main bodyportion is provided with a plurality of recesses in the form of invertedsawteeth 30, the structure and function of which will be described inmore detail below.

In the preferred embodiment, each end of drawer divider 20 includes anintegrally formed sidewall engaging portion 32 comprising a pair ofoutwardly flaring, resilient arms 34, 36 integrally joined together andintegrally joined to a body portion end at a juncture line 40. As bestshown in FIG. 6, the sidewall engaging portions are collectivelyV-shaped and terminate in tips 42, 44 for engaging the opposed drawersidewalls in the manner shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. Arm tips 42, 44 aresubstantially vertically upstanding surfaces and, in the illustratedembodiment, each tip is formed with an enlarged substantially circularcross section and has an adjacent recess 52. As shown in FIG. 2, thecircular cross section and recess 52 cooperate to facilitate thegripping action of the tips 42, 44 to the engaged sidewall.

While divider 20 has been described as having resilient arms at bothends thereof, it will be appreciated that the arms at one end may beformed so that they are not resilient or do not cooperate in creatingthe holding force for maintaining the divider in place.

Drawer divider 20 is preferably formed from thermoplastic material byinjection molding, with a preferred plastic material beingpolypropylene. The plastics forming operation lends a resiliency ordeformability to the arms 34, 36 of the sidewall engaging portions. Asbest shown in FIG. 2, the arms 34, 36 are adapted to deflect to increasethe V-angle therebetween and to exert sufficient force at the points ofengagement with the sidewalls to securely hold the dividerstherebetween. The deformation at the sidewall engaging portions occursalong the length of the arms 34, 36 and also as a pivoting or hingingaction at juncture 40.

When the dividers are inserted substantially perpendicular to theopposed sidewalls, as illustrated by the divider 20 shown in theright-hand portion of FIG. 2, the resiliency of the two pairs of arms34, 36 allows the dividers to accommodate substantial tolerances in thedrawer widths. Such variance in the distance between drawer sidewallsmay be introduced in the manufacturing of the drawer or may exist due todeformation of the drawer from use.

In accordance with the particular embodiment of the inventionillustrated in the drawings, a drawer divider 20 is provided forinsertion into drawers having opposed sidewalls spaced by 10.750 inches.Excellent results have been achieved by forming the main body portionwith a length of 10.250 inches, with the overall length of the divider,including arms 34, 36, being approximately 10.937 inches. This resultsin an overall linear deformation of 0.187 inches, when the divider isused with a nominally sized drawer. However, it has been found that thedrawer divider will securely remain in position at substantially rightangles to the opposed sidewalls with drawer widths in the range ofapproximately 10.625 inches to 10.925 inches. It will be understood,however, that with drawer widths somewhat less than 10.625 inches, thedrawer divider may be secured in place by positioning it slightly off ofthe shown perpendicular alignment.

The auxiliary tool-holding function of the invention will now bedescribed in detail, with reference initially to FIGS. 1 and 2. In someinstances it is desirable to store elongate articles in a spaced,substantially parallel mode such as represented by wrenches 60, 62 inFIG. 1. In accordance with the present invention, this tool-holdingfunction may be accomplished by placing the tool bodies in the invertedsawtooth configurations in two adjacent drawer dividers.

As best shown in FIG. 5, the tool-holding recesses in the illustratedembodiment include front and rear faces 70, 72 respectively. Front face70 is disposed at an angle A from vertical with rear face 72 at an angleB from vertical. In a preferred embodiment, angle A is approximately 5°and angle B is approximately 30°, thereby defining an included angle ofapproximately 35°. The relatively steep angle B permits tools to leanrearwardly and rest against rear face 72.

Referrin synchronously with the display scan. The preferred embodimentfurther draws out the blink data from the table memory by using each bitof the plural pictures as the logic condition so that a specific graphicpattern will blink according to the blink data from the table memory.This causes the entire display system to easily perform blinking at aspeed faster than any of the conventional devices.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a simplified block diagram of a graphic display device as apreferred embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a detailed block diagram showing the essential part of thedevice of FIG. 1; and

FIGS. 3 and 4 respectively show the configurations peripheral to thetable memory, showing the blink control operation.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

FIG. 1 is a simplified block diagram of a graphic data processingdevice, in which, reference number 10 denotes a CPU that is connected todata bus 20. The CPU 10 is subject to the control of programs of aprogram memory 11 that stores the program memory. Reference number 12 isa data memory also connected to the data bus 20, while a variety ofbuffers and flags, subject to the control of the CPU 10, are present inthe data memory. The data bus 20 is connected to the graphic displaycontrol unit 13 (GDC) and the logic/table circuit 15 for causing thegraphic patterns to blink. The GDC 13 is composed, for example, ofmPD220 (Nippon Electric Company) being well known in the industry, andit causes graphic data from the CPU 10 via data bus 20 to be developedinto designated graphic dot patterns before these patterns are stored inthe display memory 14. The display memory 14 comprises 4 units ofmemory, i.e., DM0, DM1, DM2, and DM3, each correponds to pictures to beshown, while each of these memory units stores dot patternsindependently, i.e., based on a specific control of the CPU 10, each canbe simultaneously accessed by the GDC 13 synchronously with the rasterscan of the CRT 16, enabling the GDC 13 to read the need dot data frommemory units.

Basically, the logic table circuit 15 is of a structure as shown in FIG.2 the logic table circuit memorizes a variety of data related to colorsand graphic blinking that are input via data bus 20 under the CPUcontrol to the table according to various logic conditions. It alsoselects the designated table according to the dot data logic read out offour pictures of the display memory 14 synchronously with the rasterscan of the CRT 16, and so it identifies whether colors and the blinkingare present, or not.

CRT 16 comprises, for example, a 14 inch screen containing 768×550 dots,which are subject to a raster scan performed by horizontal (H-sync) andvertical (V-sync) synchronizing signals fed from the GDC 13.

Although not shown in the drawings, a keyboard unit and a variety ofterminal units are connected to the data bus 20 via interface units. Aconcrete example of the logic/table circuit 15 shown in FIG. 2 isdescribed below. Reference number 34 is a table memory, which can beaccessed by address data from latch circuit 33. Color data based on thethree primary colors and the blink data are memorized in one locationthat is accessed by the address data. In a preferred embodiment, a totalof 16 locations are provided by four address bits, thus making itpossible to display 16 colors and also specify either the presence orabsence of the blinking according to the 16 graphic patterns.

Data in each location is provided with addresses by said latch circuit33, while each data is memorized in memory via data bus 20 under thecontrol of the CPU 10. Dot data DMO through DM3 is fed from the displaymemory to said latch circuit 33 via an other latch circuit 30 and aselector 32. In other words, 4-bit dot data simultaneously read out ofDM0 through DM3 of the display memory 14 shown in FIG. 1 is sent to thelatch circuit 30 via selector 32. Reference number 35 is a latchcircuit, 36 is the blink pulse generator, 37 denotes a gate and 38 isthe display driver circuit. Next, the blink process operation isdescribed below. The description relates to the case in which, as shownin FIG. 3, a square graphic pattern is displayed in red (R) on the CRT16 and a blue (B) circle being displayed in said square pattern and theblue circle is subject to blinking. In this case, under the control ofthe CPU 10, of the four units DM0 through DM3 of the display memory 14,DM0 will memorize a square graphic pattern and DM1 will memorize acircular graphic pattern. In the present description, only the cases ofDM0 and DM1 are cited for convenience.

During the display operation, synchronously with the raster scan, GDC 13simultaneously reads the data of DM0 through DM3 of said display memory14. Data read out of DMO through DM3 are combined, that is, a 4-bitpiece of data is created with one bit corresponding to display data ateach of the memory units, before being sent to the driver circuit 38 ofthe CRT 16. 4-bit data from DM0 through DM3 is sent to the latch circuit33. When the raster scan pulse is at the position of display memory 14(DM0 to DM3) corresponding to the point denoted by "a" in FIG. 3, data"00XX" is fed to the latch circuit 33, and as a result, by using thisdata as an address, a location of the table memory 34 is selected. Eachlocation of said table memory 34 contains data denoting the tonal rangeof red (R), green (G), and blue (B) each composed of 3-bits and a bitdenoting either the presence or absence of the blinking (BR). Therefore,when the CRT performs a raster scan against said position "a", sinceneither DM0 nor DM1 contains any graphic pattern at that position, thefirst location of the table memory 34 is selected. In this case,although the data of the first location of the data memory 34 is sentout, substantially, no control is effected. When the raster scan pulseis at the position "b", a graphic pattern exists in DM0 of data memory14, Cand so a data "10XX" is fed to the latch circuit 33. This dataselects the second location of the table memory 34 and causes the red(R) tonal data to go out so that a red dot will be displayed. Duringthis period, since the blink bit remains "0", no blinking operation isperformed. When the raster scan pulse is at the position "c", sincegraphic patterns are present in DM0 and DM1 of the data memory 14, data"11XX" is fed to the latch circuit 33. This data selects the 4thlocation of the table memory 34, causing the blue (B) tonal data to goout and simultaneously activates gate 37 by using blink bit "1".

As a result, gate 37 opens while the binary bit "1" is being output fromthe blink pulse generator 36, thus resetting the latch circuit 35. Whensaid generator 36 outputs "0", data from the latch circuit 35 is sent tothe driver circuit 38, thus dots can be displayed in any desired colors.In this way, when the blink bit is "1", latch circuit 35 can be eitherset or reset according to the cyle of the blink pulse, thus permittingdots to blink. As a result, a red square picture pattern and a bluecircular pattern in the red square pattern are displayed in the displayscreen of CRT 16 in blinking. Another embodiment of the presentinvention is described below.

The relationship between the graphic pattern memory into DM0 through DM3of the display memory and the table memory may be composed as shown inFIG. 4 as the logic condition. Composition of the table memory 34 ofFIG. 4 (A) denotes such a case in which only the triangle patternblinks. Composition of the table memory 34 of FIG. 4 (B) denotes such acase in which only the rectangular pattern blinks. Composition of thetable memory 34 of FIG. 4 (C) denotes such a case in which only thesquare pattern blinks.

What is claimed is:
 1. A device for blinking a specific graph in agraphic display produced with a raster scan of a cathode ray tube,comprising:memory means for storing a plurality of dot display patterns,said memory means including a plurality of memory units with each one ofsaid plurality of dot display patterns being stored in a correspondingone of said plurality of memory units; graphic display controller means,connected to said memory means, for reading display signalscorresponding to said plurality of dot display patterns into and out ofsaid memory means; logic table circuit means, connected to said memorymeans, for developing a picture signal and a blinking display signalfrom said display signals read out of said memory means by said graphicdisplay controller, said logic table circuit means including,dataaddress means, responsive to said display signals read out of saidmemory means, for developing an address signal synchronous with theraster scan of the CRT, said address signal being a compilation of atleast one bit from selected ones of said plurality of dot displaypatterns in selected ones of said memory units said at least one bitcorresponding to display data at a position corresponding to a positionscanned in the raster scan of the CRT, table memory means for storing,at addresses that correspond to said address signals, display signalcharacteristic data, said display signal characteristic data including aplurality of color indicating data and a plurality of blinkingcharacteristic data of respective compilations of at least one bit ofselected ones of said dot display patterns, controller means, responsiveto said data address means, for accessing said table memory means toproduce an output control signal, and blinking means, responsive to saidoutput control signal for producing said blinking display signal inaccordance with said plurality of blinking characteristic data; anddriver means responsive to said picture signal and said blinking displaysignal, for driving the CRT to produce a graphic display on the CRT andenable designated positions of said graphic display to blink inaccordance with said blinking display signal.